The EU has now felt itself moved to demand that Mandelson release details of his diary (which, bizarrely, is considered not to be a document for the purposes of rules concerning disclosure of documents but a 'management tool', and thus exempt.

The war has been an exercise in futility and mind-boggling incompetence, and yet our involvement continues — with no end in sight, no plans for withdrawal, no idea of where we might be headed — as if the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken.

I haven't been so embarrassed since Alexis Carrington's trip to Australia on Dynasty back when I was a kid, where a hotel clerk came out with some kind of bizarrely garbled nonsense which made me feel shame that that was obviously how americans Think We Talk.

(I say "bizarrely" because the play made its debut at Louisville's vaunted Humana Festival and has since been produced elsewhere to some acclaim, so you'd think we'd be dealing with a relatively polished product here.)